The University of Idaho Argonaut

Idaho 46, San Jose State 53
The Vandal women couldn’t hit the basket while on the road in San Jose, Calif. on Thursday, where they fell 53-46 to the Spartans in Western Athletic Conference play.
While the Vandals shot a poor record of just 18-for-55 throughout the game, San Jose couldn’t break the lid off of the basket either as they finished up the night with 19-for-50 from the field.
Turnovers were another key factor in the loss for the Vandals, although they improved to just 20 turnovers over their season-high 29 turnovers against Nevada on Jan. 17.

“We’re all really disappointed, we have higher expectations for ourselves,” Idaho coach Mike Divilbiss said. “You have to give San Jose State credit. They made the plays they had to make, but I think we had a big hand in us losing, too.”
The Vandal women were also missing their largest defensive threat on Thursday night. 

Sophomore Katie Madison sat out with an injury for the first missed game of her career.  In the last five WAC games, Madison has averaged 17.8 points per game.
With Madison out of the picture, Therese Riedel stepped up for the Vandals and ended up putting in eight points and grabbed eight rebounds.

Yinka Olorunnife put in another strong performance on Thursday and stepped up to the role of leading scorer with 10 points and six rebounds.  Alana Curtis was not far behind Olorunnife with nine points for the Vandals.

Spartan’s leading scorer Natalie White put in 20 points and brought down three rebounds.  Guard Sayja Sumler was the second-leading scorer for San Jose with 15 points and eight rebounds.

Idaho 53, Hawai’i 68
Even at full strength, the Vandal women were unable to come away with a win in Honolulu Saturday night. The Vandals, whose record is 2-17, 1-6 in the WAC, lost 68-53 to the Rainbow Wahine.

“I have really mixed emotions about this game,” Divilbiss said. “On one hand, I was very frustrated in the first half, because we didn’t do anything we needed to do to win this game and didn’t do anything we were capable of as players. On the other hand, in the second half we did exactly what we were supposed to do, exactly according to our ability and got back into the game.”

The Vandals were trailing by 13 at halftime, but caught up to Hawai’i on a 16-3 shooting run with six minutes left in the game. Despite their comeback, the Vandal women fell behind and never caught back up when Hawai’i hit 12 points in a row with three minutes left in the game.

Although the Vandals showed some resiliency in the second half, they were unable to rise above a 35 percent shooting average.
Freshman Carli Bakondy came out of the game as the leading scorer with a career-high 11 points and two assists.

“Carli stepped up and played really well,” Divilbiss said. “That’s what we thought she’d do when we recruited her.”
Curtis was second-leading scorer for the Vandals with 10 points in 33 minutes of play.
Madison was back in action on Saturday, finishing the game with nine points and five rebounds.

Tanya Smith was the leading scorer for Hawai’i with 14 points and 25 rebounds – more than half of the team’s total rebounds, and equal to Idaho’s total rebounds. Iwona Zagrobelna was next on the list for Hawai’i with 15 points.
The Vandal women are back in action against Boise State at 7 p.m. on Feb. 2 in the Cowan Spectrum.